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House of Commons Finds No Evidence of Tampering In Climate E-mails
dwguenther writes "The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved. The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit ... had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming."
According to the article, the head of committee which produced the report "said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain's next national election, which is widely expected in just over a month's time"; two further inquiries are to examine the issue more closely. The "e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics' research out of peer-reviewed journals," but the committee concluded that East Anglia researcher Phil Jones was not part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakens the case for global warming.
The problem with the whole Global Warming panic was not that these scientists were distorting the data. The real issue was that they didn't allow public scrutiny of the information. If another group of scientists can't reproduce these results, that the results are not science. Let other climate scientists have the raw data, and we'll see what they say. If you can get a whole bunch of people reproduce the same conclusion, then the study can be taken as credible. Until then, I reserve judgement.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Global warming is used as a justification to tax (carbon taxes) and control (cap and trade, various environmental regulations.).
There's nothing a government body wants more than money and control. Ergo, it's in the interests of the House of Commons to say 'yep, everything's legit here, and because it is, we're taking more of your money and restricting your lives & business even more. Gotta save the earth, ya know. It's for your own good.'
(The astute reader can guess my position on the matter of anthropogenic global warming, but the above statement is independent of the scientific truth of the matter.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
You want disaster? Try a 2 degree C warming across all our most important foodbelts! Even a minor, persistent decline in ecological carrying capacity will cause serious production issues.
You want disaster? Try halving the amount of precipitation (rain and snow) available to a few dozen major watersheds across the globe. Even a minor, persistent decline will lead to all kinds of resource conflicts, quite possibly even the shooting kind.
Bottom line? When you build a complex, resource-intensive society of ~7 billion people, and run that society really close to the margins of earth's carrying capacity (as we are today), then arbitrarily messing around with a bunch of climate parameters is a stupid idea. It might work out okay, or it might not.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
While rising one level above the simplemindedness of the left-vs-right mindset, you have not reached enlightenment, young padawan. There are no easy answers. "The left is correct", "The right is correct" - those are simple answers and therefore in all probability wrong. "All politicians are liars" - this is also a simple answer - and therefore in all probability wrong. The habit of judging statements not on their merit, but on their source is what is destroying political discourse, young grasshopper. No go and meditate. BUT DO IT OFF MY LAWN!!!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Let me give you a hint.
The instant you show you're only concerned with your political party being 'right' ... thats the instant everyone with a clue just stops bothering with what you said and moves on.
No one really gives a shit what political fanboys think, you included. Its not about democrat or republic, its not about left or right, its about doing the right thing, which apparently to you means whatever democrats are ranting for this month.
You are just as retarded as the republican ranters.
Both groups are ignorant fucks who don't deserve the right to vote.
Its not a fucking football game. Stop fucking ranting and cheering for your political party, open your fucking eyes and vote for the right person for the job, not because they are wearing red or blue this week.
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How does working to increase efficiency and reduce pollution wreck the economy? Last I saw, every technological advance drove our economy forward in ways no one even imagined beforehand.
Seems to me that the common sense approach is to invest heavily in technology to fix the problem, not invest heavily in public relations aimed at extending the problem. That way, we all win no matter what the truth is.
Well if the House of Commons can't find it, it doesn't exist!
"Lawmakers stressed that their report -- which was written after only a single day of oral testimony -- did not cover all the issues and would not be as in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are still pending."
But still, the original hysteria and fingerpointing was based on a few e-mails out of 1,000+ distributed by an anonymous source. The lack of context, coupled with the public's general ignorance about science, provides a ready made tempest in a teapot.
Let me put it another way: how many different investigations (and from whom) would be required to convince the doubters?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
No... Informed skepticism is required in science, it is the ignorant, maligned and malicious screaming and wailing that is nutty. Unfortunately, the GP is right, very few AGW "skeptics" have any real idea of what the hell they're talking about.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Truth should be easy to defend. There's not much scientific integrity if you have to stifle descent.
You'd think the truth that cigarettes cause cancer and emphysema would have been easy to defend too, but look how long the tobacco industry strung out that debate. They even went so far as to lie, under oath, in front of Congress.
And climate change is infinitely more complicated than "smoking is bad for your health," while having much more money involved.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How does working to increase efficiency and reduce pollution wreck the economy?
The really simple answer is a) if it's not really more efficient, b) is not really pollution, or c) the approach taken is so stupid and expensive that any benefits are drowned in a sea of harm.
Just like that? The entire agricultural system that struggles to feed the more than 6 billion humans will just be tweaked a little bit and everything goes on just as before?
Yes.
That's cold comfort to farmers that their land is now useless for growing crops, but if they could just sell their now-worthless land and buy up some new land 200 miles to the north (that now happens to be sitting underneath suburban housing) then it's all just a wee bump in the road.
That is just stupid. There's no magic border now or in the future where farmland becomes worthless due to temperature or need for water. Second, there's no heavily urbanized north to block the development of farmland. Third, if farmers' land really does become worthless for some reason, then yes, they can move north and buy some more land. It is a wee bump in the road.
I'll tell you my problem with the science behind global warming.
.12C a decade and ask, how much of that is due to CO2. If you dig into, for example, the IPCC report, you get the answer is that most of it is probably caused by CO2 (and other GHG). OK, fair enough, how do we know? Dig deeper into the IPCC report and it's based on climate models. OK, and how do we know the climate models are reliable? The answer is we don't, and if you keep digging, you will find that they aren't.
Usually when I want to understand something in a science field that I am not an expert in, I can ask a real expert to explain it. For example, I might ask, "how do we know dark matter exists?" I am not an astrophysicist, and don't know all the details, but they can explain it. If I want to understand something at a deeper level, say, "how does lensing work?" they can explain it deeper. The more I dig, the more obvious the answer becomes. In some fields, the answer is, "we think X because Y, but we don't know yet."
Global Warming on the other hand is being sold as something that "we must fix now, or disaster will occur!" So you start digging deeper, and ask, "what disaster? will oceans rise dramatically?" and the answer is, well, not really. Are glaciers going to melt and ruin the water-sources in India? Well, upon further investigation, no. Are global rain patterns going to change? Well, people are willing to predict, but if you dig deeper you find that no one actually has a clue.
So then you go to what we do know, that temperatures have risen
So now we have this system, where there are massive unknowns, and people are preaching it like it's gospel truth. And then when you get to that point, people start using the same argument that they use to show God exists, "What if we do nothing and we are wrong?". That is not science, that is insanity.
I am in favor of developing alternative energy sources, and if electric cars are like the Tesla, I really want one. But let's be sane about it. All this focus on CO2 is distracting from real problems in places like India where they actually have sulphur in the air, which is 100% known to cause problems; it's not just some theoretical issue. Let's focus on real problems, and deal with global warming when we know what the actual problem is.
Qxe4
Not everyone disagrees on the claim because it is convenient to do so, many disagree for entirely reasonable critiques of the current science.
Here is a clip from TVO:
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0
Unless you think the research chair and professor in Applied Mathematics and Global Change at the University of British Columbia and the professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also nutjobs. I am inclined to think they know a thing or two about what they are talking about. Both of them agree that the current research is over simplified, faulty assumptions, based on data used improperly. Hardly, foregone conclusion as most people who spout this rhetoric would have you believe.
Calling people names like "deniers" only proves that you are not tolerant of other ideas, and that you only have faith in your own. That is not science.
Myself I am not saying one way or another with any certainty what is happening. However from what I have read and what I have seen, much of the actual science seems to be flawed, and is heavily weighted on assumptions which are in turn based on assumptions, based on sketchy data, in which much of the methods used are questionable. The whole thing has become so politicized now, that there is more politics in it that any bit of science that may have been apart of it.
The release of the emails just added to the mess, in that it showed that "scientists" (and I use that word lightly) were actively trying to prevent people from examining their data, and actively trying to prevent other people with contrary opinions to their own from publishing it in an academic journal, going so far I heard as to try and purchase the journal so they could pick and choose who got published (only the ones that back their findings).
Anyway sketchy. I think people should be more environmentally friendly, and reduce the amount of energy we use anyway. Pollution and wanton consumption without regard is I believe is pretty irresponsible. So far as I am concerned Climate Change or not, it is something we should be doing anyway. I find most of the hype and fervor of the issue to be sensationalistic BS used for purely economical reasons. It is a complex issue that should be investigated thoroughly, and doesn't need people telling others that they are "deniers" etc... of obvious "truths". If your looking for "Truth" pick up a bible or a copy of Philosophy 101, as you won't find any "truth" in science. Science is about "facts", and reproducible experiment, or at the very very least confirmed modeling based on real life data. I have yet to see a model that hasn't failed under any kind of rigor.
Don't even get me started on the fools who blather on about geo-engineering like they know what they are talking about. That's like a blind guy doing surgery using a chainsaw. These would probably be the same morons that 100 years ago would suggest introducing a foreign invasive species to solve some kind of pest problem, not fully understanding the consequences of their actions...
Anyway I am ranted out...
So pointing out a flaw in software being used to model the climate is being a "denier"? Well count me in. I deny that software works properly sir because it's a fact. Reviewing with a critical eye a process that could change the world, well that is wise not foolish.
It's "you" people that scare the shit out of me. "Consensus" has removed the ability to disagree apparently. Attacking critical thinking is not part of science. Climate science is becoming a religion and it makes me want to puke.
said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish
No kidding. A political body doing an "investigation" like this? The phrase "the fix is in" seems to apply here - if you are honest, you have to admit the conclusion was pretty much decided before any "investigation" by the body was done, regardless of whether you trust current climate science or not.
You asked for an example of how environmental laws can be bad for the economy and he gave you one.
No he didn't. He gave an example of how it was bad for one single business. If you want to look as the overall effect on the economy you need to consider who (if anyone) filled the gap the collapse of his business left, the overall effect of trade in freon substitutes, and so on. If you think his business is an example of "how environmental laws can be bad for the economy" then you must think that the internal combustion engine caused the total collapse of all Western economies because of the number of blasksmiths it put out of work.
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The very basis of our current scientific method, when you go beyond the individual scientist, is the idea of transparency and repeatability. When a scientist, no matter what field, blocks all efforts to have their data and methodology made public... when they won't disclose "internal" code used for dataset modification... they are painting themselves into a corner.
I'm still trying to figure out how anyone can 'bless' the CRU dataset when we don't even know if all of the data has actually been made public? Couple this with yesterday's NASA revelation - that everyone is using a lot of the same underlying measurements - then it even brings into question the validity of coming to the same results.
If you and I walk into the same room, look at the same thermometer, and we agree that it says 50 degrees F... have we really 'validated' each other's result for the temperature of the room? It's still a single measurement source at the same point in time, even if it's being viewed from two different points in space.
If laws shut down businesses that were operating fine before, that's a bad thing for the economy.
Shutting down the slave trade was bad for the economy too. Pollution has a cost and it is much more insidious because the final costs are in no way related to the up front costs. While you are technically correct in saying that R-12 is cheaper than R-134a, that does not factor in increased treatment of skin cancer because of increased UV exposure (among other detrimental effects). I would argue that the banning of R-12 had an initial negative economic effect that does not even begin to compare to the negative economic effects of a nonfunctional ozone layer.
E pluribus unum
So your refutation is to assert that his question can never be asked? Basically you are saying that there is no such thing as increased efficiency and that there is no such thing as pollution. Finally you don't even address the question of how this effects the economy except to make another assertion that anything attempted will down us 'in a sea of harm.' How is that a reasonable or useful response?
I think we can all agree that people will come up with amazingly stupid ideas to solve nonexistent/pointless problems that being said people can come up with even more amazing solutions to real world problems given the resources to try. As far as I have seen the current attempts to reduce pollution have had a dramatic effect: there are far fewer instances of acid rain throughout the world than 20 years ago, building maintenance has been eased by not having to routinely clean coal dust from every nook and cranny, and rivers and streams throughout the world are providing humanity with cleaner safer drinking water and food. Do you have any instances where 'the approach taken is so stupid and expensive that any benefits are drowned in a sea of harm?' or are you just preaching to some choir that I don't hear.
To be honest, the evidence for global warming is so blatantly obviously everywhere, so incredibly pervasive that it becomes hard for anyone with a scientific mind to treat those that can't see the obviousness with dislike. Just how must of us hate the flat earth society.
I mean, just think about the oceans, and the amount of heat water can store, the amount of heat it takes to melt ice, and you realize the melting ice caps and the warming oceans are more than enough proof that global warming exists.
Really, with that overwhelming visual evidence, it is obvious the earth is warming, regardless of surface air temperatures (which vary drastically and constantly based on local conditions). Not only that, but scientists must do exactly what evolution scientists and geologists are forced to do, and comb over every last detail with a fine tooth comb and make sure their are NO published discrepancies, because even the smallest data variation leads to thousands of crazed unscientific nut-jobs storming about how everything you have ever said is a lie and that you are a dirty fraudulent alarmist and nothing more.
Whether or not it is caused by people? that is easy enough, just look at any city from afar, or smell the city air compared to the country air, or go within a few miles of a factory. You quickly realize that we are polluting to no end, and even if it isn't bad for the environment it is bad for us. But that is clearly at least slightly bad for the environment. Whether or not we are causing global warming is irrelevant to whether or not we should limit pollution, it is just used as a distraction and crux for major energy companies and industries that have the entire republican party and those that worship it in their pocket.
Attacking consensus with logical and valid evidence is one thing, but to deny the blatantly obvious is what makes scientists dislike deniers. Just as they dislike evolution deniers (and we can watch evolution before our vary eyes), radio-carbon dating deniers, and so on. There was once a time when the absolutely insane were widely accepted as such, but scientific illiteracy has made this not only main-stream, but has caused a whopping 50% of people to deny well accepted science (in the case of global warming).
As XKCD says, "A million people can call the mountains a fiction, yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them" It troubles the lovers of science when the fate of their future is at stake over such idiocy though.
Climate science is no more a religion than is belief in the heliocentric model of our solar system.
Bugs in software are one thing, but it is undoubtable that our ice-caps are glacial deposits are shrinking, and that the oceans are getting warmer. No amount of bugs in software can make that false. And no number of calculation mistakes make the smog clouds above cities disappear.
The Hatchet
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Buzz! Wrong. We calibrate models on historic data and check if their predictions match the reality.
When I was in school about three years ago I was taught that current climate models, given any set of historic data as initial conditions, are unable to accurately match more than the next ten years of climate data. To clarify, if all of the data up to, say, 1980 was fed to any given climate model, then the data produced by the model beyond about 1990 no longer match what data was recorded for the '90's. This was hammered into myself and my peers because we were getting prepped and ready to work in the spacecraft design industry. Our job was going to be to ensure the survivability of satellites orbiting the Earth (in part). That meant we had to account for things like planet-shine and Earth albedo in our thermal control designs so that we didn't bake our electronics. That also meant that we had to have accurate models of the solar activity as well as accurate models for variances in the Earth's magnetosphere. The models that we could use, with any validity, to base our designs upon were purely historic in nature. That is, we had decades worth of recorded data and we made the assumption that any patterns and cycles that were observable were likely to repeat themselves in the short term because we had no viable means of proving otherwise (we could not predict a deviation from common cycles). The reason climate models got brought up was because Earth albedo was not accurately predicted by any existing climate models. In other words, no climate models, as of 2007, were accurate enough in their modeling of Earth's atmosphere to reflect, appropriately, how much solar radiation was reflected back into space and how much was trapped/absorbed.
Do you see where I am going with this? In 2008, for our spacecraft design classes, where we had to present all of our design criteria and assumptions to spacecraft design industry members. We were restricted to using historic models of Earth's thermal data because no accurate model could do what you claim they can do now. That is, no model could reliably predict, past about a decade, what the hell was going to happen with Earth's thermal systems. The same, so far as we were taught, held true for all comprehensive Earth-climate computer models.
Now, it's 2010. Please tell me, if you know, what climate models are acutely accurate beyond about a decade. Please explain to me what mathematical constructs they used to create such a model. Please explain to me where I can read a comprehensive analysis of the accuracy of said climate model beyond a decade. That is, show me a model where I can input a historical data set that terminates in 1900 and have it accurately predict, to a statistically significant degree, most of the climate happenings up through 2000. If you can point me to this data, and these models, I and many other spacecraft designers will be eternally thankful to you. You see, such models would be one significant step in designing spacecraft to survive for more than about 10 -15 years without it being a wild crap-shoot.
If you cannot point me to said model, then please check the input signal on your buzzer, because it seems to be going off for not apparent reason.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
> Stop f*cking ranting and cheering for your political party, open your f*cking eyes and vote
> for the right person for the job, not because they are wearing red or blue this week.
Clueless twits can always be counted upon to spout this fallacy, that you should vote for the man and not the party. It is right up there with 'there is no real difference between the two parties' in being quick ways to spot someone who knows nothing of politics but has convinced themselves they not only know more but are morally superior to the people who actually invest the effort to get a clue.
In saner times there is a measure of wisdom in your advice but most times, especially since the start of the Progressive Era, there are stark differences between the two (or more) camps. In modern times there are two great philosophies contending in the public arena.
1. The name shifts every couple of years since the majority of Americans HATE the ideas so every time a critical mass realize the new name is just the same old dogfood the name changes again. And to be fair there are policy differences and some shades of grey. But essentially this camp is the Progressives, Fascists, Liberals, Social Democrats, Labor, Socialists, Communists, etc. They are all bound together by the common belief that the State, personified in a "Great Leader", should lead a dictatorship of the enlightened few over the clueless masses. Believes in the Rule of Men.
2. Conservatives and Libertarians in a grand alliance against the forces of Statism. Believes in classical liberal ideas like natural law, individual rights and the Rule of Law. More bluntly, American ideas.
These two philosophical systems are so divergent that little common ground exists for compromise. We basically have a Cold War going on with two hostile camps kept from violence only by both sides seeing the better chance at the ballot box. But this situation isn't stable, our government is growing ever more unstable and people are losing faith in it. Eventually one side must defeat the other, driving their foe from the field and (re)implementing their system of government. And since neither side is likely to simply retire from the field without a final appeal to the sword the future doesn't look good.
So no, I won't vote for the man instead of the party. To paraphrase RAH (since I don't have the book handy) it is better to vote for a dunderhead of your own party, so long as he is subject to party displine and lacks such moral flaws as to render him a menace to society, than a genius of the party opposing. For while the dunderhead won't accomplish much even a dunderhead can represent his voters wishes. Meanwhile the genius of the party opposing is likely to accomplish much, almost none of which I will like.
Democrat delenda est
Great, except that you need to classify carbon as "pollution" for your argument to make sense. And carbon is "pollution" only if it significantly contributes to global warming, so your argument has to assume its conclusion!
Limiting carbon emissions is expensive - that's why there is a legitimate argument about how much human contribution to emissions matters and whether incurring those costs now is the best way to respond to the risks of global warming in the future.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
There is a real scientific problem with your skeptics dismissal.
The properties of Co2 are not in question here and never were. The question is whether or not the change in the amounts of Co2 is large enough on scale to have the claimed effect outside of other observations because the raw physics equation doesn't side with observations. Co2 is a very small part of the atmosphere and the amount that is supposed to be a problem something like .0005 of the total atmosphere. And to add to that, there are plenty of other green house gases that display properties similar to Co2 in much larger quantities which are more effected by natural events then man made events. There are many outside factors that contribute to the problem like submarine volcanic activities, shifts in oceanic currents along with the decadal oscillation events responsible for El Mino and so on. That's why there is a complex climate model and not a climate math problem that any high school child could figure out.
I mean seriously, if it was as simply as Co2 has X heat retention value when exposed to Y amounts of heat then the entire proof would be X+1*y. And for every one in addition to X, simply measure the temp and see if it's accurate. Well, it's not that simple and to date, no attempts to make it that simple have been accurate.
What you are doing is essentially saying Wool is warm, I see ten sheep with wool, I am going to be warm and criticizing anyone who doubts you. Your league of followers may believe that you will eventually shear the sheep and make fabric from the wool that you will eventually make into some warm clothing and wear, but I don't have to believe you will, the guy you responded doesn't have top believe you will, actually, no one who can critically think should believe you will until we see you wearing the wool sweater and socks. SO if Co2 is actually the problem, more specifically, man made Co2, then show us the damn wool socks and sweater already. Don't sit there and cry because the properties of Co2 are such or that someone questions the claim. `All that does is show how little about the situation you actually do know. And when I say situation, I mean both global warming as well as the skeptics.